With Pharrell and Jonah Bokaer, 'Rules of the Game' is Daniel Arsham's Latest Multimedia Triumph

On Tuesday night in Dallas, Rules of the Game, a collaborative project and multi-disciplinary production between composer Pharrell Williams, choreographer Jonah Bokaer, and artist Daniel Arsham with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra premiered at the second annual SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival. Two years in the making, the production highlights three mediums; art, music, and dance; working and interacting with one another to assault the viewer’s senses and make for a powerful and memorable experience. Though the project might seem painstakingly ambitious (it is), it’s only the latest example of Daniel Arsham’s cross-platform domination. As vast as the art world has become, it is still an insular world. Aside from a fashion collaboration here or some music sub-culture references there, the art world does have a tendency to snub its nose at other mediums, especially those from popular culture. But Arsham has made a career out of finding such pretensions seem regressive and has created some of his most powerful work while cross-pollinating with pop culture. “[Pop culture] is in some ways far more egalitarian than the art world is,” says Arsham. “I’m trying to investigate our current moment in time and the big ideas within our civilization. I’ll do that through as many mediums as I can.”

Daniel Arsham, picture by James Law

After growing up in Miami, Arsham attended Cooper Union in New York (where he would receive the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003). Though the production limitations of his school workshops resulted in him mainly working in traditional modes of painting and sculpture, he displayed a knack for the grand sweeping ambitious concepts he would eventually became famous for early on. He was particularly interested in architecture; specifically subverting the purposes and applications of architecture such as stairs leading nowhere and walls covered in decay. “I appreciate the precision within architecture, but I hate math,” he says chuckling. “I always had an interest in objects that people knew and were familiar with and altering them in some way.”

Arhsham’s art career started taking off in tandem with his successes in collaborative and commercial projects. Unlike other artists who seem to be criticized for engaging with popular culture (Marina Abramovic in a Jay-Z video, anyone?), Arsham has been able to fold both his fine art and commercial practices into one cohesive creative world. Galerie Perrotin started representing Arsham’s art work in 2005, and shortly after in 2006 he started branching out by designing sets for the late legendary dance choreographer Merce Cunningham in 2006. While his art has shown at MoMA PS1, Athens Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and more, he has also designed fitting rooms for Hedi Slimane while the designer was still at Dior Homme and started working with Rules of the Game collaborator Bokaer. “Mixing audiences is one of my favorite things,” says Arsham. “It’s something of a cross-disciplinary and cross-class idea.”

'Rules of the Game'

While so many artists project an attitude of “if you don’t get my work then that’s your problem,” Arsham actively thinks about his audiences and doesn’t limit those audiences to those engaged with the art world. His design firm Snarkitecture that Arsham founded in 2008 with architect Alex Mustonen perhaps best exemplifies this idea. The aim of Snarkitecture is to subvert existing materials within a space to find a new and imaginative purpose for that space. Within the team, Arsham’s job is to disrupt the precision or architecture with concept. For example, the Manhattan and Brooklyn-based sneaker retailer KITH, designed by Snarkitecture, is designed to construct a loose narrative. As a result, sneakerheads looking to get a pair of Ronnie Fieg’s newest sneaker designs end up engaging with a concept whether or not they have any sort of awareness of fine art. Arsham lights up at these dichotomies. “There are some artists out there that can sit in a room and work and not care who ever sees it, but I am not that kind of artist,” says Arsham. “I want to make work that people can engage with. The work is completed by people engaging with and experiencing it.”

Arsham first met Pharrell
Williams when he went back to Miami after graduating Cooper Union. As he remembers it, he already considered Pharrell to be famous with The Neptunes already being a production team at the tip of the entire music industry’s tongue. But Pharrell wasn’t yet a household name, and a friendship and creative camaraderie started developing between the two. But it wasn’t until Arsham created molds of the Casio MT-50 keyboard that Williams began recording music with that an official collaborative relationship was born.

'Rules of the Game'

But Rules of the Game is a different beast entirely. Though not a direct adaptation, the production is based on Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 absurdist play Six Characters in Search of an Author and combines Arsham’s explosive visuals and design with Pharrell’s music (as played by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra) and dancers choreographed by Bokaer. If it sounds like grueling work to get three distinct creative visions to work cohesively in one production, that’s because it was: “We’ve worked on this a very long time so we’ve had the time to experiment to see what might work and what won’t,” says Arsham.

Arsham notes that Pharrell created an entire demo album worth of music that was then edited down to be converted to an orchestra by composer David Campbell, and that getting his visuals to succinctly match Bokaer’s choreography were only some of the difficulties faced when putting the production together. He added that the team would be working on the project until it premieres (which as of now, it has). He was very happy with how the production was turning out. “Anyone who knows Pharrell’s work and music will identify this as Pharrell but at the same time it’s very different from pop music,” says Arsham.

'Rules of the Game'

Daniel Arsham doesn’t have a comfort zone, actively pursuing new ideas and new ways to present those ideas, regardless of art world perceptions. But despite his varied résumé, Arsham refutes the idea that he ever had a plan to become such a multi-hyphenate creative. “I would say that I’ve fallen into certain types of collaborations without really intending to do so,” he says. “If I’m interested in something and I get to do it once and there is opportunity to do more, then I just do it.”

Arsham is currently working on several film projects in response to the success and acclaim bestowed upon him after his first film project, Future Relic 03, played at Tribeca Film Festival last year. Just like Kanye West is not really just a rapper or just a fashion designer, but more a curator of fantastical experiences, a similar notion could be said of Arsham not being just an artist. Even if you are an ardent protector of radicalism in art and only titillated by the provocations of Marilyn Minter or Wolfgang Tillmans, no one can deny Arsham’s resolute fearlessness. Arsham explains that his willingness to risk failure was instilled in him by the late Cunningham, who told Arsham that he would always find more interesting ideas while creating work that could prove to be a failure. “You’ve got to take risks,” says Arsham. “Calculated risks.”